Social (-ecological) network analysis in environmental governance - central publications, important concepts and areas of application data collected in January 2019

Social and Social-Ecological Network Analysis (S(E)NA) have recently emerged as new methods in the environmental governance (EG) literature. By investigating networks of connections between actors, S(E)NA advances the understanding of who is involved in EG and how. We provide an overview of the EG literature applying S(E)NA and respective metrics of 1) a citation network analysis, 2) topic detection methods and 3) a similarity network analysis. 20 publications occupy central positions as sources, storers or bridges of knowledge in the citation network. While we see S(E)NA applied in diverse resource contexts, these are mainly discussed on the local spatial level, with a focus on “policy” or “collaboration”. We discover that “power structures” and “the production of knowledge” are themes influencing the whole field.